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Assignment 2 Essay PEAC373 Globalisation: As If People and Ecosystems Matter Matthew Ryan 220086769 Question 2: 'What measures can

an be taken against global warming? You should examine solutions at a variety of levels, including international, government, corporate and community.' Word Count: 3074.

What measures can be taken against global warming? You should examine solutions at a variety of levels, including international, government, corporate and community.

An International crisis.
'Climate change is perhaps the ultimate global problem. It is caused by everyone, affects everyone, and requires the cooperation of everyone for its solution. Mounting evidence suggests that a warming world is already contributing to major problems, from refugee crises prompted by rising sea levels to famines caused by desertification. Yet national leaders have found reaching agreements on how to tackle this global challenge remarkably difficult ' (Jarman 2009:299).

The vast majority of governments, think-tanks, organisations, instiutions and even individuals, around the world recognise climate change and the energy crisis as the defining challenge facing the human race in the 21st century. 97-98% of the global scientific community accept that anthropogenic climate change is occuring (Branagan 2012 online). Yet the inspirational rhetoric employed on national and international stages including both government bodies, and corporations as exemplified by the above quotation are contradicted by squabling and innaction on a policy level. Even a cursory exploration of the swathes of literature relevent to such a monolithic issue is enough to create despair, with global warming indicators racing ahead of even the most concerning projections. There are two popular trends which are adopted by the community upon such an exploration: cynicism accepting the current global path, and embracing anhiliation with black humor; or skepticism accepting the propoganda created by a minority of corporate-sponsored think-tanks and scientists, which are given an unfair weighting in the media and in public discourse in general, which would have us believe that there is either no climate change at all, or that any climate change is due to natural causes. Despite these two trends cynicism and skepticism there are a huge array of measures which can be employed, at every possible level, which will abolutely help to mitigate the process of human-driven climate change. The problem is solvable. Hundreds and thousands of pages of scholarly papers and internationally recognised reports have detailed the science of global warming, and the purpose of this essay is not to attempt an evaluation of science. From here we will accept global warming as a given, and also accept that it is being accelerated by human activity. Our purpose must be to move past scientific debate, and to discuss the measures which must be taken, on a political and societal level. From the very outset, it should be established that not one of these measures is required to act as a "silver bullet", and completely solve the current crisis; but through the comprehensive and collective adoption of an array of measures, implimented from the level of the individual global

citizen, to international governmental and legal action, we can not only halt environmental collapse, but create a more successful and sustainable global system. As Al Gore, one of the best known climate change campaigners, has often said: one of the many challenges facing the world is to rebrand climate change, global warming, and the energy crisis to make them seem as immediate as they are, in order to create the political will to make real, concrete steps toward a more sustainable world (Gore 2006 online). A Categorization of Action. The measures that can be taken against global warming are many and varied. They can also be catagorised in various different ways, such as measures for the individual, government, corporation, or even global community. But perhaps a more effective way to explore these measures is to look at the key sectors which are creating the bulk of CO2 emmisions, and then subdivide the actions to be taken into various levels. In Jeffry Sach's Common Wealth (2008:97), he identified not an exhaustive list of measures, but an accessable one:
'We must slow or stop deforestation. We must economise on electricity use through more efficient motors, appliances, lighting, insulation, and other electrical demands. We must reduce emmissions from electricity production.'

I would also like to touch on one contentious measure, which until recently has not been considered in the mainstream debate geoengineering. It should be established immediately that this paper does not advocate such a measure, but rather sees it as an important issue to be discussed in order to prevent unilateral action in such a direction, while being aware of the "moral hazard" that such discourse could be.

Measure 1 Stop Deforestation. The process of clearing forested areas is one of the largest contributors to the process of anthropogenic climate change. 33 million acres of forest are cut down every year, amounting to 450 million acres since the 1950s (Biello 2011 online). Even by the conservative reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), deforestation accounts for up to 20 percent of global carbon emmissions, not to mention the damage it does to biodiversity, soil salinity, and biogeochemical cycling (Schmook 2010 online). The main cause of deforestation is developing contries clearing forested areas for agricultural use, and to export timber. However the land cleared in, say, the Amazon, is overwhelmingly of poor agricultural value, and is often abandoned soon after

being cleared. Timbre for construction and paper could just as easily be grown in renewable plantations. One of the proposed ways to slow or stop this destructive process is to use market incentive. With such a low incentive to prompt logging in the first place, a modest economic incentive to local communities such as payments to leave the trees standing rather than turn the land into pastures would relatively easily to realign the market forces which currently lead to the felling of trees (Sachs 2008:97).That incentive to leave trees standing then must be extended to the reforestation process replanting the trees for even if we stop deforestation completely, we must still move to undo the damage already done (Biello 2011 online). The greatest challenge to solving the problem of deforesation is a difference in priorities. Currently the global North see climate change as a risk to the international community, and as a key policy driver. In this context, forests are seen as a global resource, or "carbon sink", which must be protected. But the South are pre-occupied with developement, and bridging the income gap between the North and South. In this context, forests are seen as an export which can fund development (Winzer and Davenport 2008 p. 290). The only way this international clash of priorities can be overcome is if economic incentives to stop deforestation, and to start the process of reforestation, is both labelled as, and bundled with, Official Development Assistance (ODA). If the Millenium Development Goals are to be achieved, then commitments of ODA from the richest countries are due for massive increase (Ryan 2012 online), and this would be an excellent avenue to both assist in international development, and cut global carbon emmissions by 20 percent. Some progress towards this end has been achieved, with the OECD committing almost 4 billion dollars specifically to this end, over 2010-2012, in an attempt to make a tree standing worth more than a tree felled (The Swedish Wire 2010 online), but such an occord is in need of both renewal and scaling up. What we can take from the Olso UN Climate Change Conference, at which said 4 billion dollars was pledged, is that deforestation is on the political agenda. But more action is needed, in what could be the easiest third of required emmission cuts, if we are to keep warming below two degrees Celsuis. As has been touched on above, this measure requires action on many levels. The global community, lead by the North, must realign the economic incentives which currently lead to the felling of trees, as a form of development assistance to those poor countries which are still cutting down trees. Such incentives can then guide the corporate community to find other sources for timber perhaps through a reforested wood certification system. And all of these measures require action by the individual, to generate the political will to make a change. This will be a common theme through many of the measures to be suggested in this paper individuals and community groups must put pressure on those in power, be it by protest, petition, or direct correspondance, if any change is to be

made. That pressure must then be supported by the choices we make as a consumer. If the corporate community provides us with recycled or reforested alternatives, we must then vote for that measure with our wallets.

Compared to stopping deforestation, reducing emmisions from electricity production is a far more complicated measure required to combat climate change but again, one that is absolutely solvable. Just as with the larger climate issue, there a huge array of solutions on the table, and many more currently being researched. This cannot be an exhaustive scientific analysis of the possibilities of each, but an overview of some of the areas in which measures are required for a global solution to global warming. The five major avenues in which measures are needed are: more efficient use of the electricity that we make; a greater amount of our energy generated through nonfossil fuel sources of energy; completely eliminating subsidies and tax concessions that favor the use of fossil fuels; using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from any fossil fuel electricity plants which remain; and perhaps most importantly, leaving current deposits of fossil fuels in the ground (Jarman 2009:305, Sachs 2008:97).

Measure 2 Enegrgy Efficiency. Efficiency will mean a reduction in emmisions through reduced usage, and can be implemented from domestic home settings all the way up to industry, thus it is a measure to be taken by all sectors of society. This could take the form of more energy efficient design, insulation and geothermal heating systems, natural lighting, and more efficient bulbs (LEDs and Compact Fluorescent Lights). These will save energy, and also reduce energy costs for business and households (CSIRO 2011:117). While these measures are often a win-win in terms of energy use and expenditure, governments can also make steps in this same direction through subsidies for these technologies, and also economic incentives in the form of taxes on carbon emmissions. However,

'as important as it is to change the lightbulbs, it is more important to change the laws' (Gore 2007 online).

What Al Gore is saying in the above quotation is that energy efficiency is not sufficient in itself to reduce carbon emmisions. Improvements to energy efficiency are sometimes seen as "low hanging fruit", and sometimes championed as the answer to our energy crisis. But this is based upon faulty logic. Even if we halved energy usage in rich countries across the board, that then amounting to a

reduction in global emmissions is predicated on the poor countries staying poor, as small economies also have small carbon footprints. At no point can our answer to global warming be reliant on such a disparity we must find answers which allow emerging economies to develop in a "green" way (Sachs 2008:98). So, while energy efficiency is important especially for the individual the way we produce that energy absolutely must change. Measure 3 Energy Production. This global warming countermeasure is one of the most obvious. If the burning of fossil fuels is causing the world to warm, then we need to stop burning fossil fuels. In lue of that fact, the past few decades have seen the rapid research and development of renewable energy sources, including: bioenergy, which encapsulates a variety of technologies using organic residues and wastes from various sources to create heat, electricity, or various fuels; direct solar energy technoligies, which capture the energy emmitted from the sun, to produce heat or electricity; geothermal energy, which utilizes the accessable thermal energy from the Earth's interior; hydropower, which harnesses the energy of water moving from higher to lower elevations, primarily to create electricity; oceanic energies, which use the potential kinetic, thermal and chemical energy of seawater to provide electricity (such as submarine turbines); and wind energy, which utilises the kinetic energy of moving air, primarily to create electricity with large scale use of turbines (IPCC 2011). The point to be reiterated here, is that not one of these energy solutions has to take the place of coal fired electricity plants by itself. The energy mix of tomorrow must be a combination of these types of energy production, tailored to suit different regions and envrionments. And this isn't some pipe dream, or untested hypothesis. There are already communities which run completely on renewable power, and many others striving to reach that point. Feldheim, Germany, is one such community, which runs on it's own completely renewable grid, powered almost exclusively by wind power (Rayasam 2012 online), while the futuristic utopian Masdar City, in Abu Dhabi, is powered by an array of solar devices, including a revolutionary 1 Megawatt Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) generator (PR Newswire 2010 online). These are actual examples of communities and developments which have taken those renewable resources that are available to them (wind in Germany, and sunlight in the United Arab Emirates), and built a renewable energy system around them. The CSIRO has published a projection of the potential energy mix for Australia in 2050, and it includes: brown coal (with CCS), black coal (with CCS), natural gas (with CCS), savings through distributed generation, biomass, solar, rooftop photoviolitic solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro, all combining to produce an energy output of 400 Terawatts more than 150 Terawatts over current energy production. Of current energy production in Australia, more than half is coal, without carbon capture (CSIRO 2011:113).

The realisation of this future is reliant on a combination of measures, enacted at every level. Communities and individuals need to create the political will to make the change, governments need to legislate for the complete redundancy of fossil fuel energy generation (though some use of CCS during a transitionary period is given), corporations will respond to support this change if the incentive is there (a price on carbon), and there absolutely needs to be consensus on an intergovernmental level. Squabling and inaction need to be replaced with understanding and action. A measure to be discussed geoengineering. Geoengineering is another measure which could be used to combat climate change, but unlike the measures already suggested, this one is not so much a prescription as a warning. David Keith has defined geoengineering thus: 'the intentional large-scale manipulation of the environment, particularly manipulation that is intended to reduce undesired anthropogenic climate change' (Keith 2007 online). It is a distinctly science-fiction-esque concept, of man altering the very planet he lives on, and includes technologies such as: the relatively benign policy of carbon dioxide removal, through breeding algae in the oceans to act as a CO2 sink, or creating biochar, which will act as a fertilizer which sequests carbon from the atmosphere; or the more agressive (and effective) method of solar radiation management (SRM). Mimicing the effects of a massive volcanic erruption, SRM aims to put large amounts of sulfates into the upper atmosphere, which will act to reflect some of the Sun's radiation, and thus cool the planet (Mulvaney and Robbins 2011:2). One of the attractions of the latter scheme is that it is relatively cheap. $100 Billion dollars could completely reverse anthopogenic climate change. In comparrison, reducing climate change by cutting carbon emissions would cost around $1 trillion yearly. So what is the catch? There are several. Firstly, playing God with the atmosphere could have severe side effects. We have already seen that volcanic erruptions interupt rainfall and river flows. Geoengineered SRM could have the same effect, on an even larger scale, leading to the failure of monsoons in South Aisa, and drought in other parts of the world (Mulvaney and Robbins 2011:5). Secondly, even a public debate about geoengineering is effectively a moral hazard. It could lead people to believe that the climate change issues isn't as pressing as it is, and use geoengineering as an alternative to emissions reductions. Even if through further scientific research we designed a geoengineered solution to global warming, we would still be totally reliant on a limited resource. However, there are two key reasons for the idea of geoengineering to enter the public. climate discourse. Firstly, due to the cheap, and relatively instantanious results of SRM, there is a serious risk

of it being used as a unilateral measure one country, or even a lone billionair, could impliment SRM by themselves. To protect from that eventuality treaties and laws must be agreed to and implimented in the international arena (Shollenberger 2010 online). We have a Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and unilateral geoengineering could be just as dangerous as a nuclear strike. The second reason it must enter the mainstream debate, is that if it is ever needed, futher research into the best way to do it, and the drawbacks of different stratergies, need to be underway or complete. It is possible that due to the inertia of carbon emissions, that even if we do reach our emission reduction targets, that the earth with still warm to an unacceptable extent. In that eventuallity, geoengineering combined with a reduction in emissions, might be the best option (Keith 2007 online). * Conclusion There are a huge array of measures to be taken against global warming, on all levels individual, community, national, corporate, and international. While this essay has in no way listed them all, we have found several key areas in which significan steps can be made, if we are to transition into a carbon neurtral world. We must stop deforestation. We must improve the efficiency with which we use our power. We must switch energy production over to renewable sources of power. And we must also consider more extreme options, such as geoengineering, while not allowing such a discussion to dull the fervor in which action must be taken. But perhaps the greatest simple step would be for governments to carry through on their poweful rhetoric:
'This is the critical decade. Decisions we make now to 2020 will determine the severity of the climate change our children and grandchildnren experience. It is essential to transition to low emmision development pathways if the world is to tackle climate change and achieve sustainable development' (Australian Government 2011 quoted in Greenpeace 2012 online).

Climate change and the energy crisis are solveable, but we must put aside doubt, and act now.

Reference List
Averting the Climate Crisis (video recording), Feb 2006, TED, accessed at: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/al_gore_on_averting_climate_crisis.html 27/9/12 Biello, D. 2007, '10 Solutions for Climate Change: Ten possibilities for staving off catastrophic

climate change', Scientific American, 26 Nov., accessed at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=10-solutions-for-climate-change 27/9/2012. Branagan, M. PEAC373: Globalisation: As If People and Ecosystems Matter, Topic 6 Notes, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, accessed at: http://moodle.une.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=291668 27/9/2012 Jarman, M. 2009, 'Climate Change', in World at Risk, CQ Press, Washington, 299-320. accessed at: http://www.une.eblib.com.au.ezproxy.une.edu.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx? p=475753&echo=1&userid=vAZSOGuWLWhA5bSLGvXMtg%3d %3d&tstamp=1348737119&id=D411B12A2918D7452F91DC1DA1D766C9A52BD1B1 27/9/2012 Mulvaney, D. & Robbins, P. (eds) 2011, Green Politics: An A-to-Z Guide, SAGE Publications Inc., online at: http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/greenpolitics/n33.xml 27/9/2012 Sachs, J. 2008. Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, Penguin Books, New York. Schmook, B. 2011, 'Deforestation', in Green Politics: An A-to-Z Guide, eds D. Mulvaney & P. Robbins, SAGE Publications Inc., online at: http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/greenpolitics/n33.xml 27/9/2012

Community based social marketing broard scale social change (smoking adds -> climate change).
Since I became aware of international issues, early in my life, global warming has been the common theme through that decade of my intellectual growth. Even as a very young boy the logic of curtailing the use of fossil fuels in an attempt to stop apocolypse seemed, to me, very clear. Debate around the validity of climate change science aside (though I have never doubted it), those fuels will run out, so what possible argument could there be to maintain, or even increase, our reliance on these fuels. Now as I look at these issues analytically as a part of my tertiary studies, the understanding of my earlier teens is cemented with facts and figures. The moral tradgedy that is the triumph of greed over common sense must be righted. If we fail to do so, perhaps the earth is justified in shifting climate patterns in a direction which could forseeably result in the end of us as a species. But before we abandon hope, let us be optimistic to the end of our energies, and constantly fight for our world. This will be far from easy indeed, simply reading the literature needed to write this essay was enough to seriously upset me but is absolutely necissary.

'This is the critical decade. Decisions we make now to 2020 will determine the severity of the climate change our children and grandchildnren

experience. It is essential to transition to low emmision development pathways if the world is to tackle climate change and achieve sustainable development' (Australian Government 2011 quoted in Greenpeace 2012 online).

Reference List http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-power-grid-of-their-own-germanvillage-becomes-model-for-renewable-energy-a-820369.html http://greencollarclimate.com.au/news/world%E2%80%99s-first-carbon-neutraltown-%E2%80%93-the-race-is-on/ http://www.swedishwire.com/politics/4725-rich-nations-step-up-fight-againstdeforestation http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=10-solutions-for-climate-change http://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_on_averting_climate_crisis.html 'as important as it is to change the lightbulbs, it is more important to change the laws'. http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/greenculture/n80.xml http://www.springerlink.com/content/hr040v7778474163/fulltext.pdf http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/greenpolitics/n33.xml

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